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Guitar Hero Live: A Brand New Experience

• Jimmy Tran
• April 16th, 2015

Remember how you felt when you first played Guitar Hero?  You felt like a rockstar, right?  The crowd cheering as you aced every riff, the familiar rock songs, even playing side-by-side with your best friend. It was a wonderful, innovative feeling.  However, the weak spin-offs caused the series to lose it’s charm.  Future games were nothing more than clones of their predecessors.  However, Activision decided that that enough was enough, and revealed Guitar Hero Live.

In an effort to reboot the series, developer FreeStyleGames ripped the generic Guitar Hero formula apart.  They took away the third person camera, the colored buttons, but more importantly the pixelated crowds.  They redesigned the controller, made the game first person, and brought in live crowds.  Yes, you get to play in front of a “live” audience” with real reactions, real people.  This is something that has never been seen before.  The game even features a music video library where players can play hundreds upon hundreds of videos.  If you don’t believe me, check the trailer below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SnIZgESm4c

The developers took away the five side-by-side colored, and instead replaced with something they called a six-button configuration.  Near the first fret, all six buttons can be found stacked on top of each other.  And with the music video library, players can find themselves competing for scores against their friends.  At the same time, players can also play the game on their mobile devices.  This was how Activision Publishing senior director Tyler Michaud worded it, “Imagine someone is using the television in your house, you can take (the game) in the other room and play on your phone screen or on your tablet screen with the whole guitar.”

Seeing the trailer reinvigorates the rock star feeling.  You truly feel that you’re playing for a live crowd rather than a group of pixels.  That was something that developer FreeStyleGames wanted.  Creative director and studio head Jamie Jackson said, “We starting thinking about what was it about Guitar Hero that made it the game phenomenon that it became.  The one common theme that kept coming up was … it makes me feel like a rock star.”

Compared to the past couple Guitar Hero games, everyone was tired of the same mechanics.  You  would pick up an instrument, play it, and make a pixelated crowd happy.  Do it wrong, and well, they boo you.  Really, it was disappointing to see this in every Guitar Hero.  Granted, that was what made the series.  However, because the series refused to grow, it suffered in the long run. Even the spin-offs weren’t that exciting.  With Guitar Hero Live, players can expect something new, something fresh.

We won’t have to wait long for this.  It’s due for a fall release along with many other games.  It’s priced at $99.00 (which includes the controller and platform specific game).